Re: Cars

I took a mental inventory of all the cars I’ve ever owned: a VW Beetle, a Honda Civic, a Chevy Blazer, a Toyota Previa, a Toyota Camry, a Dodge Ram Roadtrek and finally a Toyota Yaris. I also enjoyed a decade riding a 50cc SYM Fiddle II. Each vehicle matched the times/needs of my life: youth, parenthood, facilitating, or adventuring. At one point I had the camper van, the Yaris and the scooter parked simultaneously in my carport. Coincidentally all modes of transport were coloured white. My youngest son was impressed, commenting, “You’ve got a fleet!”

My Beetle was second hand & red. It cost me $750. I drove to Maine and back home to Whitby. I outfoxed a policeman while driving it back from a barn-party. The Civic was my first brand new car, costing around $1500. I drove it to Timmins with my first wife by my side, excited about my first job. A new Blazer truck seemed the right thing to get for a growing family. It cost me $8,000 but it lasted me ten years and, one memorable summer, it took a family of five camping all over the East Coast of Canada. When I bought my Previa it was all the buzz in 1991. I took a test drive and I called it a shuttlecraft because it reminded me of StarTrek-TNG. My teenaged boys absolutely loved it. I checked the bank account and squeezed out the $21,000 MSRP. I shared the cost of two Camrys during a transitional stage in my life (one black and one gold which symbolically illustrated my emotional flow from darkness to heavenly days). My new bride encouraged me to get a used Roadtrek I had coveted for decades. Together we took to the road, enjoying the feeling of no-fixed-address.

Cars give us freedom and independence. My bride loves using the Yaris to get away, even if it is just an autonomous ride into the city. Being older, I notice I am becoming more tense while driving or in the passenger seat. I’m weighing the odds of having an accident (I’ve had 4). I’m finally realizing the impact automobiles have on our health and the environment. When I was in high school you could get away with drinking while driving. It took decades before groups like MADD convinced us of the folly of mixing alcohol and gasoline. Now we have climate change.

It’s still a car culture, big ass truck sales are on the rise. Joy rides are still a thing even though they may be shorter. In our community there’s a growing interest in making roads safer with designated lanes for cars, busses, and bicycles. Car owners are not happy about sharing the road that they have dominated for decades. With modern realities, we are all going to need to create a new culture, less dependent on fossil fuels.

Die-cast Dinky cars, easily imagined in the chubby hands of a kid in a sandbox, may soon be a sight only in story books. The environment must come first.